the best use
of it." She was used from her childhood to this sort of academic doubt
of everything, conducted side by side with a practical acceptance of
everything. Professor and Madame La Rue, in actual life devotedly
faithful married lovers, staid, stout, habit-ridden elderly people,
professed a theoretical belief in the flexibility of relationships
sanctioned by the practice of free love. It was perhaps with this
recollection in her mind that she suggested, "Don't you suppose it
will be like the institution of marriage, very, very gradually altered
till it fits conditions better?"

"In the meantime, how about the cases of those who are unhappily
married?"

"I don't see anything for them but just to get along the best they
can," she told him.

"You think I'd better give up trying to do anything with my
Colorado--?" he asked her, as though genuinely seeking advice.

"I should certainly think that five years was plenty long enough for a
fair trial! You'd make a better ambassador than an active captain of
industry, anyhow," she said with conviction. Whereupon he bestowed on
her a long, thoughtful stare, as though he were profoundly pondering
her suggestion.

They moved forward towards the Grand Canal in silence. Privately she
was considering his case hardly one of extreme hardship. Privately
also, as they advanced nearer and nearer the spot where they had left
Mrs. Marshall-Smith, she was a little dreading the return to the
perfect breeding with which Aunt Victoria did not ask, or intimate, or
look, the question which was in her mind after each of these strolling
tete-a-tetes which consistently led nowhere. There were instants when
Sylvia would positively have preferred the vulgar openness of a direct
question to which she might have answered, with the refreshing effect
to her of a little honest blood-letting: "Dear Aunt Victoria, I
haven't the least idea myself what's happening! I'm simply letting
myself go because I don't see anything else to do. I have even no very
clear idea as to what is going on inside my own head. I only know that
I like Austin Page so much (in spite of a certain quite unforgotten
episode) there would be nothing at all unpleasant about marrying him;
but I also know that I didn't feel the least interest in him until
Helene told me about his barrels of money: I also know that I feel the
strongest aversion to returning to the Spartan life of La Chance; and
it occurs to me that these two things